Someday, I’ll Be That Grandma

Someday, a millennial grandma is going to yell “Go shawty, it’s your birthday!” while handing out cupcakes at a 6-year-old’s party and honestly….I’m starting to accept that it might be me.

I had a random, yet startling thought the other day when Eminem’s Lose Yourself came on the radio on my drive home. As I was rapping alongside Em in my car like we were in an underground rap battle, I realized that someday I’ll be dropping F-bombs while frosting cupcakes and nobody will bat an eye.

Grandparents, Parents, and the Music That Shaped Them

When I was younger, my grandparents rocked out to Frank Sinatra, and blasted their big band music at backyard BBQs. In those moments, you could see it written all over their faces. They were transported back to a moment in time. When music was good, and people were better. When everything made sense and life was easy. And I can’t help but wonder, will our generation ever have that? Instead of Dean Martin or Bing Crosby will we sit outside in lawn chairs rocking back and forth to Nelly’s Hot in Herre, or enjoy a nice glass of Metamucil while playing Canasta in the living room with Lil’ John playing softly in the background reminding us that yeah, we still turn up?

Music has always reflected the times we live in. My grandparents had songs that were polished, smooth, and perfectly appropriate to play in any living room. My parents grew up with the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater, Prince, and Michael Jackson. Still rebellious in their own way, but nothing that made you blush in front of your Sunday school teacher.

Our Era of Explicit Expression

And then came my era. 50 Cent, Eminem, Nelly, Lil’ Kim, Usher, TLC, and countless sensational others. An entire generation of music filled with explicit lyrics, raw emotion, and unfiltered storytelling. And God, it was amazing!

We were the first generation to grow up with songs that didn’t just tell a story. They dropped F-bombs, pushed boundaries, and made us question what was acceptable in the public eye. And yet, we consumed it voraciously, memorizing lyrics, dancing, and singing along, often with the same pride my grandparents once felt for Sinatra.

But now I wonder, will we ever get to experience music in that same nostalgic, transported way, in front of our own grandchildren? Or will we hesitate, second-guessing every lyric as we belt it out, secretly feeling a little odd about the curse words that once defined our youth?

Perhaps the opposite will happen. Maybe by the time we’re grandparents, music will have evolved so far past our comfort zone that our explicit 2000s playlists will sound practically wholesome. Our sweet, innocent grandkids might be singing words we couldn’t have even imagined saying out loud in the ‘90s. By then, language itself might be so slang-filled and multilayered that double meanings become triple meanings, depending entirely on which generation you’re talking to.

Nostalgia in the Age of Headphones

But the bigger question isn’t whether we’ll be able to play explicit music in front of our grandkids. It’s about how music itself has changed. My grandparents’ songs were built for living rooms, dinner parties, and public gatherings. Their music was meant to be shared. Ours? Ours was meant to be blasted in headphones or cars, shouted with friends, or whispered so your mom wouldn’t hear the lyrics. So what happens when a generation raised on private, personal, wildly expressive music becomes the elders of society? Will future nostalgia even feel the same, or has music evolved so much that we’re longing for something society was never meant to hear at full volume?

Maybe that’s the real twist. Nostalgia used to be communal, but ours might be curated. Personalized. Algorithm-approved. My grandparents had three stations on the radio and a stack of vinyls everyone in the house listened to whether they liked them or not. We grew up with playlists and mixtapes we guarded like diaries. Songs tied to specific people, phases, heartbreaks, car rides, and inside jokes no one else would ever fully understand.

So when we’re old, what do we pass down? A shared soundtrack, or twenty different micro-soundtracks that only make sense if you were there?

Music Still Connects Us

Our grandkids won’t need the whole story. All they’ll need is a beat they can’t help but move to and a hook that feels like freedom. Because even if the slang keeps evolving and the production gets wilder and the references make absolutely zero sense to us…like whatever that “six seeveennn” arm thing the kids keep doing is…rhythm is still human. Bass still thumps in the chest the same way it did when we were teenagers trying to act grown.

Maybe the point isn’t whether they understand our music or we understand theirs. Maybe it’s that music has always been the one thing that bridges generations even when language fails.

The Grandparents Who Turned Up

And who knows, our grandkids might one day look at us, earbuds hanging out of their ears, and say something we can barely decode but still completely understand:

This one hits. Play it again.

And I will. I’ll smile, press play on my now “retro” five-disc CD changer, pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my grandma bun, and start rapping:

His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy.
There’s vomit on his sweater already, mom’s spaghetti.

Meanwhile, a six-year-old across the room bounces to the beat, doing that bizarre “six seeveennn” move, and I’ll think:

Yeah. We really did become the grandparents who turned up.

Loud. Proud. Forever millennial.